Honor MagicOS 8.0 announced with intent-based UI and platform-level AI

Honor announced its latest mobile operating system with MagicOS 8.0 at a dedicated event held in China earlier today. The new version is based on Android 14 and brings a MagicLM on-device large language model with 7 billion parameters. Honor is also touting MagicOS 8.0’s intent-based user interface (IUI) which proactively suggests services and apps based on your usage patterns.

The other big new feature is called Magic Portal which leverages Honor’s LLM and IUI to offer context-based app and services shortcut recommendations via a side swipe. Honor demoed an instance of dragging and dropping a booking reservation from the messages app to your maps app to get directions to the venue.

Magic Portal supports multimodal input like text and images and also tracks gestures and eye movement on supported Honor phones. You can tap an hold on images of clothes and then drag them over to the side to search within shopping apps. Honor confirmed support for the 100 most popular apps in China but there are no details on how and if these features will be carried over to other regions.

MagicOS 8.0 also brings new home screen customization options, UI speed improvements and should consume fewer resources thanks to some under-the-hood tweaks by Honor’s software team. There’s a new shake-to-block ads feature to fend off annoying pop-ups and system-wide Parallel Spaces for displaying two instances of the same app.

Honor MagicOS 8.0 will launch on the Honor Magic6 series flagships which are on track to debut tomorrow in China.

Honor also shared a preliminary MagicOS 8.0 public beta release schedule with the following devices and launch timeframes.

January 2024

• Honor Magic5 Ultimate Edition
• Honor Magic5 Pro
• Honor Magic5
• Honor Magic4 Ultimate Edition
• Honor Magic4 Pro
• Honor Magic4

February 2024

• Honor Magic V2 Ultimate Edition
• Honor Magic V2
• Honor Magic Vs
• Honor Magic Vs2
• Honor Magic
• Magic V
• V Purse
• Honor Magic3 Ultimate Edition
• Honor Magic3 Pro
• Honor Magic3
• Honor 100 Pro
• Honor 100
• Honor 90 GT

March 2024

• Honor 90 Pro
• Honor 90
• Honor 80 Pro
• Honor 80 GT
• Honor 80

April 2024

• Honor 70 Pro +
• Honor 70 Pro
• Honor 70
• Honor 60 Pro
• Honor 60
• Honor 50 Pro
• Honor 50

May 2024

• Honor X50 GT
• Honor X50 Pro
• Honor X50
• Honor X40 GT
• Honor X50i+
• Honor X50i